What I said, I think the business education, however you get it is important, but I don’t think that you can only come in and expect to operate a zoo with nothing other than a business background, because animals are the main reason we have a zoo. And if animals… Read More
Conversely then what skill set qualities does a zoo director need today as compare to when you started. A better business background now, and it used to be that to be a zoo director, you almost had to be a biologist or as zoologist. You normally came up through the… Read More
You have to worry about roofing repair, about building repair, about automobiles, insurance, marketing, just anything in any other business you have to worry about. You have to worry about in a zoo plus the care of the animals. Read More
Well, they have so many more educational opportunities now. They have internships. They have residencies. They have externships. If you want to go into a zoo right now and be a zoo veterinarian, you have the opportunity to seek advanced education. We didn’t have that in the ’60s. The best… Read More
And what skillset qualities would you say a zoo veterinarian, ’cause you’ve been both worlds, needs today as compared to when you started?… Read More
What made you a good zoo director?… Read More
Being a consensus builder, realizing who our audience was realizing what it took to please our visitors, our children, that we were trying to educate, keeping close liaison with the board members, being aware politically, what was going on in the way of new laws and the way of fundraising… Read More
Basically the same made me a good veterinarian is the fact that I put the animals welfare first. I respected the animals. I wanted to do the very best we could by them. And if I didn’t know an answer either try and find someone that did, or in the… Read More
And so working closely with the people that were intimately involved in the animals on a day to day basis and being willing to say, “I don’t know,” and either get help from outside or do research. The internet has made that so much easier now. We can find things… Read More
Same, different?… Read More
What made you a good veterinarian, do you think, and what made you a good zoo director?… Read More
As an aside, does she remember that today?… Read More
She vaguely remembers it and she wasn’t so upset about it but my wife was a little bit upset with me. Research in the zoo. Some questions to think about, two part. Read More
And we had people there and caught the cheetahs and put ’em back. But we had to go through some things like that to convince Dr. Thomas, we needed to actually go with a physical barrier at the edge of the water before we could feel safe to have the… Read More
And they would do things like this. So, we shortly convinced Dr. Thomas that cheetahs could swim and that we couldn’t depend on a water keep them in. So then he decided, well, let’s put an electric fence at the base where they would have to come out of the… Read More
Well, sure enough, she did that and she was reluctant to do it. So we told her, we’d give her a nickel if she’d do it. This is back in ’70s. Now you could still buy a candy bar for a nickel, Mark, but we gave her the nickel and… Read More
Oh, there are a lot of stories. Once we hit a topic, I’ll probably think of one, but the escaped animals are probably, and that’s something it’s not supposed to happen in a zoo as you well know we all have procedures for animal escapes and we categorize them by… Read More
[Mark] We’ve talked about stories. Read More
Are there any other stories, whether they be medical stories or direct oral stories that come to mind that you might want to share with us of your time at Brownsville?… Read More
Dr. Merrill’s first comment was my God. That’s the first kid I’ve ever had that could grab the forceps from his umbilical cord with his feet. So we had a lot of fun. We worked closely with the local medical community, and I can’t remember an instance when I ever… Read More